Author, mathematician and photographer Lewis Carroll was happiest in the company of children.
By: Ilene Dube
What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?" asks the eponymous character in the opening paragraph to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, filled his books with both. Starting with the esteemed Victorian illustrator Sir John Tenniel in 1865, Alice has been brought to life by more than 100 artists.
But before any illustrator fancied what Dodgson’s characters would look like, the author made photographic portraits of the children who inspired his work. Princeton University Press has just published a landmark book on Dodgson’s photography, Lewis Carroll, Photographer: The Princeton University Library Albums ($49.95), by Roger Taylor, a British photographic historian, and Edward Wakeling, a Lewis Carroll scholar, also British. As the title hints, Princeton University’s library contains the most extensive collection of Dodgson’s photographic work.
At a publication party held March 16 at Princeton University, Peter Bunnell, the David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art who wrote the book’s introduction, said he has been agitating for the publication of these photographs for the 30 years he has been on the faculty. "It is one of the great treasures of the Princeton University Library. The book offers the most extensive discussion and documentation of his pictures ever published."
"Among the most creative of Dodgson’s photographic accomplishments are the albums of images he assembled," writes Mr. Bunnell in the introduction. "He created these for essentially three different purposes: ‘show’ albums that he could exhibit to visitors and prospective sitters, albums that contained family portraits and photographs of close acquaintances, and finally, gift albums for friends."
Princeton has four of these albums, and the book is stunningly designed to look like a photo album: the cover includes a curved-top sepia-toned facsimile of a photograph of Alice Liddell, inspiration for the Alice character, looking demure in a white dress, seated next to a fern. (In the Victorian language of flowers, the fern was said to symbolize sincerity.)
In addition to the charming portraits of children, Dodgson photographed landscapes, still lifes, anatomical specimens and characters in costume, staged to tell a story.
"In considering Dodgson’s photographs, we must avoid the temptation to see merely the who, where and when… Nor should these photographs invite consideration only because of who made them," writes Mr. Bunnell. "It is his genius as a picture maker that must be appreciated."
The book’s authors make the case that Dodgson was more than an amateur, having left behind at least 2,500 negatives. Dodgson began his career as a mathematics tutor at Oxford University’s Christ Church, and he took up photography, then an emerging science, to add more to his life than reading and writing.
"He had an uncle who was into the modern technology of the day and became a proficient photographer, as well as a colleague studying chemistry and anatomy who was into photography," said Mr. Wakeling, who visited Princeton on the occasion of the publication. "With photography, he could achieve a higher standard of art than he could with his drawing. (From an early age, Dodgson had been sketching and drawing. He illustrated manuscript pages for Alice that he ultimately gave to the young Miss Liddell as a gift.) It was important for him to think of his photos as art."
In 1856, photography was a fashionable pastime that allowed gentlemen to demonstrate their interest in technology, chemistry and optics while tapping into their artistic capabilities, says Mr. Taylor, also in town for the book release.
"His understanding and affection for children allowed him to create a relaxed and magical atmosphere in which photography was just one part of the proceedings," writes Mr. Taylor. "His stories, riddles and magic tricks created a rapport that allowed him to make some of the most sympathetic and compassionate portraits of children taken during the 19th century."
He found beauty all around him: in paintings, sculpture, poetry, music, higher mathematics and, above all, people. Simultaneously, he was very difficult to work with, says Mr. Taylor. "He laid out grid lines in the albums so everything fits meticulously. Nothing was left to chance."
If Sally Mann’s nude photographic portraits of her own children raised eyebrows in the late 20th century, one can only imagine the uproar that arose when Dodgson photographed nude or partially clothed children during the height of the Victorian era.
The portrait of Alice Liddell as "The Beggar Maid," clothed in shredded rags that drape over her shoulder and reveal a nipple, caused much speculation about his character.
"People read into it," said Mr. Wakeling. "If you see these (pictures), you think, ‘What’s all the fuss about? Why would anyone object?’"
When Dodgson first bought his Ottewill camera in the late 1850s, showing nude portraits of children in the name of art was acceptable at annual exhibitions. Print and booksellers in London were importing nude studies from France in order to meet the demand. But attitudes gradually began to change, with vigilante groups from the Society for the Suppression of Vice out to clean up what they perceived as immoral. That photography could render the nude so lifelike and realistic was what led to its censorship.
Meanwhile, the greeting card business in London was headed in the opposite direction, with semi-naked children dominating the market. Illustrations of childhood innocence juxtaposed with erotic overtones were common.
As an ordained deacon of the Church of England, Dodgson filled his diaries in the late 1860s with prayers and entreaties: "I pray to Thee, oh God, for thy dear Son’s sake, help me to live Thee. Help me overcome temptation… For of myself I am utterly weak and vile and selfish." It has previously been written that these thoughts were linked to Dodgson’s repressed sexual feelings, that "chastity and a supreme consciousness were not enough; a clear conscience required… an absence of desire, a mind free of sexual fantasies."
Dodgson’s spirits may have been crushed when the relationship he long cherished with the Liddell family and the young girls cooled.
"(His) is not the record of a habitual voyeur, pornographer or pedophile, but the response of an overtly sentimental bachelor to the innocent beauty and grace of childhood," writes Mr. Taylor. "Whether this type of photography was Dodgson’s way of satisfying or sublimating his sexual desires can never be known and will always remain fruitless speculation. Certainly the fear that this might be the case never troubled the families involved, and we can be certain that any whiff of impropriety would have been keenly scented… His aspiration was to create a nude study that would be regarded as a work of art and not be out of place in the drawing room of the most respectable home."
Lewis Carroll, Photographer: The Princeton University Library Albums by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling (Princeton University Press, $49.95) will be available at area bookstores, including Micawber Books and the U-Store in Princeton. It can be ordered on the Web from www.pupress.princeton.edu or www.amazon.com